LATEST ISSUE

The final AJ of the year looks back at the past 12 months and forward to the year ahead. We review 2018’s key architectural events and trends and preview the stories set to dominate the new year. We also pick out the people to watch in 2019 and highlight eight key buildings set to complete. And to make sure you’ve been paying attention, there’s a Christmas quiz on the events that shook the architectural world in 2018 and a chance to play spot the building. PLUS a building study of Karakusevic ..

Just six days after Johnson won his second term as London mayor in May 2012, the actor and campaigner penned a hand-written note to him, offering him a ‘thousand congratulations’ and adding ‘our cheers and shouts reached the rafters, soared above the Shard…wonderful news for London.’

The letter (see was released following a Freedom of Information request made by the AJ.

Lumley - who first conceived the idea of the bridge in the late 1990s – wrote that she and designer Thomas Heatherwick wished to meet Johnson to discuss their plan ‘in the near future’.

She described the bridge as a ‘green pedestrian bridge, with cycle tracks alongside, with container-grown trees: and beauty and practicality in equal measure.’

The bridge, which now boasts planning permission from both Westminster and Lambeth councils, no longer includes provision for cyclists and Lumley told a Lambeth planning meeting last November that she alone was responsible for that decision because it would stop the crossing being a ‘peaceful place to walk’.

The letter to the mayor claimed that the bridge would bring ‘great loveliness’ to the Thames and added, ‘please say yes’.

She signed off the letter by thanking Johnson for ‘the tulips and the Forth Plinth photographs’.

In his reply the following month, Johnson said he would ‘very much like to hear’ about the plan but suggested Lumley initially meet his chief of staff Edward Lister and deputy mayor for transport Isabel Dedring because of his busy Olympic schedule.

Johnson first leant his formal backing to the Garden Bridge in August 2013 when he announced that the Greater London Authority and Transport for London would ‘help enable’ the scheme.

Critics said the letter underlined the extent to which the Garden Bridge project - which has secured £60m of taxpayer funding but was originally intended to be almost entirely privately-funded - had sidestepped public procurement rules and was driven by those ‘able to personally lobby the mayor’.

Leader of the Liberal Democrat group in the London Assembly, Caroline Pidgeon, said the letter raised ‘significant questions’ over why cycle access had not been retained and how ‘the changing views of one individual can lead to such an important revision in the architectural design of a major project’.

She added: ‘If public money is to go into the Garden Bridge then at the very least it should meet the needs of the widest range of Londoners and not just the views of those who are able to personally lobby the Mayor.’

Darren Johnson, the leader of the Green Party in the Assembly said: ‘This shows how a Mayoral enthusiasm for an idea and the people who are promoting it, can quickly turn into a £60m public investment.

‘As with other projects the Mayor has been involved with, Boris Johnson has assumed that there will be little investment from the public purse and has then ending up sinking millions into getting his pet project off the ground. Public procurement rules are meant to protect transparency and lead to a robust case for a project, but I have real doubts about the outcomes with this process. Useful transport elements of the original idea, such as a cycle track alongside the bridge have been abandoned and we have been left with a tourist attraction with no guaranteed public access.’

A spokesman for the Mayor said the bridge would be a ‘fantastic new landmark for London’ and said it was a shame that Assembly members continued to criticise it.

He added: ‘All infrastructure projects are subject to change in the design process and it is absurd to suggest that the Mayor was persuaded to support this iconic scheme solely on the basis of it having a proposed cycle track.

‘As well as offering Londoners a stunning new way of enjoying the river, the Garden Bridge will be a major draw for visitors to our city, helping to support economic growth on both sides of the Thames.’

A spokesman for The Garden Bridge Trust said: ‘The design has evolved and been informed by detailed assessments of transport and pedestrian use. Including segregated cycle lanes would mean less space for people and planted areas.

‘There are alternative existing and proposed cycling routes over the river nearby, which will provide direct and fast access for cyclists.’

Comment:

Martin Knight, a bridge architect and former chairman of the RIBA competitions task group:

‘Grand projets require a visionary patron and an inspired designer and there is no doubt the Garden Bridge is a project of positively Presidential ambition.

‘But the equally ambitious French projects of Giscard d’Estaing and Mitterand were the results of public architectural competitions, where the lavish spending of public money was carried out in public view and subject to public scrutiny and debate.

‘When the Garden Bridge was committed £60m of the British taxpayer’s money – more than double the cost of the nearby Millennium Bridge – the change from an initially private fantasy to a major project backed with TfL’s and the Treasury’s money should have triggered some form of public debate and architectural competition that was open and transparent, instead of being hurriedly legitimised by a planning process that did not anticipate its audacity.

‘The fact the commitment to the bridge offering a public space is heavily caveated - including the exclusion of cyclists in apparent contradiction of the Mayor of London’s policy - reinforces the poor value this project will offer the (national) tax paying public who are paying for one third of it.’

Related files

You might also like...

Thomas Heatherwick’s scrapped £200 million crossing, championed by former London mayor Boris Johnson, is to face fresh scrutiny from politicians following the hard-fought release of the Garden Bridge Trust’s meeting records

Writing recently in defence of new housing tsar Roger Scruton , fellow provocateur Toby Young hit out at the army of ‘offence archaeologists’ trawling the internet (mainly the philosopher’s own website ) in search of morsels of controversy

For the past 20 years, Patricia Brown has acted behind the scenes to shape major developments across London. Now she’s going public to say we need a new approach to regeneration in the capital that improves everyone’s lives. Christine Murray reports

Readers' comments (11)

As David Cameron has promised a similar amount of public money for his Tory-party-fund-raising Holocaust memorial project perhaps we could combine the two ill-conceived ideas into one and then the next government could hopefully cancel them both together on the first convenient Friday afternoon.

the design is just as poor as Anish Kapoor's olympic park tower - unfortunately the overall negative impact of the 'garden bridge' will be far greater than the tower - let's all hope that it's still not too late to stop the whole misguided adventure in its tracks !

The bridge could be lovely (especially with a cycle route, and fully open to the public like the Paris Promenade Plantée) but the process stinks. At least it shines a light on all-in-it-together austerity. Right now it should be 100% philanthropy or nothing. Perhaps the chairman of Boots would like to stump up for it from his tax-efficient zillions.Congratulations AJ for the FoI tenacity.

Couple this latest twist in the whole sorry debacle that is the Garden Bridge, with today's announcement that the Assembly will vote through two new exclusive super cycle highways through London and the exclusion of the cycle way on the Bridge makes no sense at all.
Undemocratic, ill conceived vanity projects need to be consigned to the planning bin by a new mayor - Tessa Jowell I hope you're listening!

This project is a done deal, passed by both Labour (Lambeth) and Tory (Westminster) Councils either of which could have stopped it. The only thing that might yet bring a halt to this misguided misplaced idea is if no body is prepared to stump up the annual £3.5m (latest estimate) upkeep.

Nice work AJ; the water under this bridge just gets murkier and murkier. Please sign/RT/share this petition thanks: https://www.change.org/p/eric-pickles-eric-pickles-put-the-garden-bridge-where-it-s-needed-without-using-public-funds-or-scrap-the-idea

There are over 344 thousand families on London council waiting lists, awaiting a home. Even to make it onto the lists means jumping difficult hoops. With the continuing sale of the public estate the pressure will increase. We return to the world of Marie Antoinette "let them eat cakes" or sleep on garden bridges.

A bridge too far - way too far - but, if built, it will exemplify a breathtaking degree of arrogance in both politicians and personalities.
But is this a uniquely London 'thing', or does it speak of a wider creeping sickness in our society, heralded by the ever increasing gulf between the 'haves' and the rest?

The AJ supports the architecture industry on a daily basiswith in-depth news analysis, insight into issues that are affecting the industry, comprehensive building studies with technical details and drawings, client profiles, competition updates as well as letting you know who’s won what and why.